Courtesy of`Charlie Wood I saw this BusinessWeek article on salespeople.

"The problem is the same qualities which make salespeople so successful out in the marketplace can cause them to wreak havoc when they return to the office and interact with the rest of the staff.... To succeed, a salesperson must have (a) The hide of a rhino, to withstand constant rejection, (b) the stamina of a cheetah, to keep chasing a deal after all the others have given up, and (c) the persistence of a hyena, to never take "no" for an answer...Almost by definition, a great salesperson is going to try your patience...Instead of complaining about it, why not become a student of this rare but valuable species—and learn how to handle them effectively? ..the six common types of salespeople—folks like Negotiate-to-Death Neil and Throw-It-Over-the-Wall Wanda—."

Accountants of the world should breathe easier - it's not just you the salespeople grate on!

I agree good salespeople are worth pampering (after all I am one for my company, heh, heh)....but why do they need an entourage to support them? Especially in software, as I wrote here the marketing, business development, inside sales etc. are a) expensive and b) mask the really good salespeople. Now, I sound like that accountant...

Erik Keller describes Sarbanes Oxley in French Revolution terms. In a comment he says "the rage that the
average person has had for the cascade of examples trotted out over the years."
I have heard others defend SOX in similar "justice" terms. Big is bad. We are making Immelt and McNealy and other CEOs look as guilty as Lay and Ebbers.

In Dickens' book, England became a safety valve for various people wanting to escape the Bastille and the Guillotine. The London Stock Exchange has similarly benefited from our version of the Bastille. Of course, we could export the revolution. With Nasdaq trying to acquire the LSE and Europe's own often aggressive compliance initiatives, the possibility is not remote.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Even if we promise the masses they can eat cake.

As Novell tries yet another transition - this time with a new CEO, I thought Chris Mellor did a nice job summarizing missed opportunities - huge ones - over the last decade. Instead of fighting Microsoft or Red Hat, sounds like they should been focused on EMC. The company with great brands over the years like Netware. WordPerfect, Cambridge Technology Partners and SUSE certainly knows about transitions. It just needs to stabilize the next one.

No question the ladies like the man. Indeed when he shows up to play, the police worry as much about crazed lady fans as they do British hooligans. But there is no man law which says you cannot admire David Beckham's ability to bend the ball as he did today against Ecuador.

Expect more movies about his spectacular and topsy-turvy career. And at least a few Motorola commercials.

Transparency International does periodic surveys of perception of corruption. According to the 2005 survey, Iceland is perceived to be the world's
least corrupt country, and Bangladesh and Chad are perceived to be the
most corrupt.
It draws on surveys of businesspeople and country
analysts.

The US is ranked 17th, China 77th, India 88th in that survey.

Mark Twain once said the US "is a nation without a distinct criminal class with possible exception of Congress". I am pretty sure you could easily substitute US and Congress in most countries around the world and come up with the same conclusion. You just have to be ready with bribes, graft, bakshish, payola, dash, cadeaus, mordida, tea money, lap dances, soft money...

Zoli points to the continued expansion of the Zoho Office Suite = "Microsoft Office for the rest of us"

NetSuite which offers a SaaS ERP product has a campaign = "SAP for the rest of us" (actually it could also be Oracle - the apps and the database, but Larry Ellison has a stake in NetSuite)

Compiere which offers Open Source ERP and CRM raises a nice financing round. Open Source is creeping in to the application layer, after impacting operating systems, databases, web servers - other layers of the stack = "Open Source for the rest of us"